Artistic Oeuvre Research Articles

«Как ни жить, но жить вместе…»: материнско-сыновний сюжет в социально-политических рассказах Н. Д. Хвощинской

In our article, the optics of research developed by I. Savkina on the material of women’s auto-documentary genres is applied to the artistic oeuvre of N. D. Khvoshchinskaya. Based on her correspondence, we have shown that there are no fixed boundaries between an autodocumentary and a fictitious letter in the case of N. D. Khvoshchinskaya. Her works are a kind of sublimation of life experience. In the article we touched on one of the private pages in the biography of the writer, specifically reflected in the mirror of her fiction, – her marriage with I. I. Zayonchkovsky. Against the background of correspondence highlighting the inner experience of the writer, we analyzed the structure and semantics of the maternal-filial plot, persistent in those works that were written after the marriage. Socio-political stories After the Flood (1881) and Blizzard (1889) have been used for the analysis. In the course of the research it was found that in the character analysis of mother heroines the historical component is “extinguished” and, conversely, supra-historical, archetypal features are actualized: maternal care, wisdom, empathy, spiritual elevation, kindness, support, suffering, etc. The article shows that the plot role of the mother is determined not by the socio-political plots that make up the external canvas of the stories, but by the underlying initiation plot. The mother, “superfluous” in the external event plan, plays an important role in the initiation plot: she happens to be near the hero at the moment of life’s trials. At the same time, it is established that she does not facilitate the change in the son’s status. This function is given to her plot “understudy” – the heroine-lover. The plot role of the hero also changes: he acts not so much as a revolutionary who has failed, but as a son experiencing the process of initiation. As a result, the range of themes dealt with in N. D. Khvoshchinskaya’s stories goes beyond the socio-political conflict caused by the historical situation, and acquires a universal scale.

Otkriti nâs nama samima – Josef Strzygowski i Ljubo Babić

Ljubo Babić (1890-1974) - one of the pivotal figures in twentieth-century Croatian art and culture - frequently addressed the research and theses of Josef Strzygowski (1862-1941) in his writings on various topics, directly or indirectly. Babić’s interest in the work of the renowned Austrian art historian and theorist primarily revolved around formulating ideas that emphasized the significant role of art in shaping national identity. In essence, Babić’s complex views on the role of art in moulding a distinct artistic expression - as a central and constitutive part of cultural identity - can be traced, among other things, to his contemplation of Josef Strzygowski’s though-provoking yet contentious theories on Croatian preRomanesque art and national cultural heritage in general. This paper investigates Strzygowski’s impact on the comprehension and appreciation of Croatian cultural heritage during the interwar period, i.e. on the overall atmosphere in which a broader discourse emerged on the relationship between artistic centres and peripheries, while the pursuit of national artistic expression began to dominate a major part of the Croatian cultural landscape. Consequently, the paper examines connections between Strzygowski and the Croatian cultural milieu between the two world wars. Finally, Strzygowski’s importance to Babić is highlighted, delineating the aspects of his theoretical work that the Croatian artist, critic, and art historian used to support his own viewpoints. Josef Strzygowski’s influence on Croatian culture was undoubtedly profound. Besides positioning himself as a connoisseur and advocate of Ivan Meštrović’s art, this Viennese scholar centred his interest on art-historical material from Croatia. Despite often eliciting direct counterreactions from the professional community - exemplified by Ljubo Karaman’s early theoretical writings on “ancient Croatian monuments” as a critique of Strzygowski - his focus on “our” material secured him an important place within the national cultural milieu of the time. Ljubo Babić, who was at the peak of his creative prowess in the late 1920s, approached Strzygowski’s work without critical detachment, integrating certain segments of the latter’s assumptions into his own theoretical framework. While direct influence cannot be unequivocally asserted, it is apparent that Babić found substantial support for his formulation of the “our expression” strategy in Strzygowski’s views. Both scholars believed that the characteristics of a specific body of art were crucially determined by the geographical area of its creation, with the national component being a pivotal aspect. Consequently, they embraced the concepts of soil, race, and blood, which makes them apologists of cultural nationalism. The relevant ideas of the distinguished Viennese art historian lent Babić additional confidence in presenting his own thoughts as indisputable and firmly established, thus framing the hypothesis that the Croatian people had inherited distinctive features of artistic production from their ancestral homeland - regarding them as a form of “our expression” in the past. Moreover, Babić endorsed Strzygowski’s call for further scholarly research into the history of Croatian cultural heritage, viewing adherence to the principles of geographical and national predisposition of artistic production as facilitating the consensus on “our expression” in contemporary times. Additionally, he concurred with the suggestion to investigate folk art, incorporating the interpretation of colours on folk costumes into his strategic framework. Through his writings and artistic oeuvre, Ljubo Babić strove to help us “reveal ourselves to ourselves,” and the work of Josef Strzygowski provided significant support in this endeavour. The prominent position of the renowned Viennese art theorist within Croatian culture certainly lent credibility to this support. Therefore, the relationship between Strzygowski and Croatian culture should not be solely construed as a kind of rivalry with Ljubo Karaman or as merely stimulating the formulation and development of a significant theoretical scope within Croatian art history, even if devoid of scholarly foundations. Rather, it can also be understood within the context of cultural nationalism during the Croatian interwar period. Such a perspective reveals that Josef Strzygowski and Ljubo Babić inhabited the same intellectual universe, which played a vital role in shaping modern European culture.

Samuel Niedenthal and the Legacy of Zoology in the Seventeenth Century

The aim of this study is to analyse the extensive collection of the zoological drawings by Samuel Niedenthal that has been preserved in Dresden. They were executed using various techniques and depict a variety of animal species. This article draws attention especially to studies of the local fauna. This legacy of Pomeranian zoology is unique and important given the destruction of the painter’s artistic oeuvre, but also because it illustrates development of science in his time. Niedenthal’s depictions of animals, birds and insects are the first such complete compendium created in in seventeenth-century Central Europe. The detailed and accurate pictures make it possible to identify species occurring in the area, representing the first records of them in Pomerania.

All Hail, King Pippin!

Abstract Since shortly after its publication in 1957, The Short Reign of Pippin IV has been considered Steinbeck’s least characteristic work and is universally viewed as standing squarely at the bottom of his canon of fiction. This article argues for a reevaluation of the consensus view, arguing that Pippin is a crucial part of Steinbeck’s artistic oeuvre not only on its own merits but more importantly when viewed in literary sequence as his penultimate novel. Before his fictional work draws to a dissonant close in 1961, in Pippin Steinbeck draws a comparison to a musical coda that achieves an artistic effect of finality by altering the main themes of a movement through changes in tone, tempo, or key. Pippin is the last time Steinbeck expresses in fiction a fundamentally optimistic orientation toward the human condition,

Co-created by the Wadden Sea

In Anna-Rosja Haveman’s essay, the largely forgotten work of the Groningen artist Han Jansen is examined. Her analysis unpacks the artistic oeuvre, within a broader perspective of the nature-culture debates in art and society. The public discussion that emerged around the Waddenprojects brings to bear contrasting ideas about nature in society. By embedding the project in the historical context of emerging environmental activism, the tensions inherent in art that aims to ‘raise awareness of nature’ become clear. As illustrated, the position of Han Jansen remains paradoxical: while he certainly intended to contribute to the awareness of nature and reconfigured hierarchies between humans and nature during the making process, the project created an image of a human, the artist, as polluter without further reflection on the ethics of his own actions.

Fossils: Lithography’s Porous Time and Eugène Delacroix’s Faust Marginalia

Abstract The new printing technique of lithography, which flourished in the early nineteenth century, has been examined for its connections to Romantic ideals of artistic subjectivity, to the liberal press, and to a boom in visual media. This article centers lithography’s unique materiality to investigate the significance of its new technique—its use of limestone—that establishes compelling connections to natural history and new conceptions of time. Eugène Delacroix’s (1798–1863) unruly marginalia, which populate the borders of the first printer’s proofs of his 1828 lithographic illustrations of Johann von Goethe’s (1749–1832) Faust, serve as a case study. Drawn on and printed from lithographic limestone, the marginalia can be interpreted as fossils. This article examines how lithography facilitated new conceptions of history, time, and memory that provided grounds for a Romantic artist like Delacroix to blur the boundaries between the human and the earthly, the artificial and the natural, the ephemeral and the historic, to find within the liminal the production and reproduction of transgressive forms that persisted throughout his artistic oeuvre.

Dream India Dream:Re-kindling a Post Colonial Perspective Through Manas Bakshi's Vision of India


 
 
 
 In an era when colonial legacies are being abandoned and national identities are being re-claimed, literature, rather than history, is recognized as the most reliable source of information on monumental events, epochs, and upheavals that mark the evolution of various civilizations. Since both literary works and historical events are influenced by social dynamics, they can both point to watershed moments and spark transformation. Poetry, in a reasonable sense, also qualifies as an authentic record of times and a way of looking at life with an attempt at drawing greater meanings from one's circumstances of existence than may be apparent through other modes of expression. Poetry, with its ability to evoke emotions, communicate complex ideas, encapsulates the essence of human experiences in a manner that is both subjective and universal. Apart from enabling the quest for self-knowledge and self-fulfillment, poetry has also helped humanity survive against demons of destruction and annihilation. It has aided as a sure and steady toolforsocialcriticism,provingitslastingsignificancenotonlyfor humanitybut to other lifeforms and the planet as a whole. The latest compilation of poems brought out by Manas Bakshi, titled Dream India Dream,published in 2022, constitutes a significant addition to his artistic oeuvre.
 
 
 

Simboličke konotacije motiva cipela u filmovima Nike Autor

Nika Autor, a Slovenian visual artist, director, and photographer is a member of the Newsreel Front (Obzorniška Fronta). Her films delve into themes such as the migrant crisis, labor rights, and the politics of memory, while challenging the expressive possibilities of the film news format through stylistic experiments and interventions in the social field. This paper aims to explore the multifaceted symbolic connotations that Autor infuses into the motif of shoes while addressing the aforementioned issues, starting from the film Solidarity (2011), where footwear becomes the central visual symbol of the protest for workers' rights, all the way to the films created in 2022, focusing on illegal migration, where shoes become bear traces of arduous and uncertain movement, signifying both physical and spiritual displacement. The motif of shoes in Autor's movies is not treated as an isolated object of interest but rather as a mediator of meaning. The analysis of individual films (Postcards /2010/, Solidarity /2011/, In the Land of Bears /2011/, Newsreel 63 - The Train of Shadows /2017/, Newsreel 2021 - Here I Have a Picture /2022/, Newsreel 451 - Across the Water to Freedom /2022/), is complemented by intertextual and intermedial comparisons exploring the relationship between film and visual art. This approach provides a comprehensive insight into the subject of research and a clearer positioning within Nika Autor's artistic oeuvre, by drawing analogies with the use of the shoe motif to express related ideas by other film and visual artists.

From Lugano to Krakow: The Career of Giovanni Battista Trevano as a Royal Architect at the Vasa Court in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, many builders, artists, and architects living on the shores of Italian lakes decided to settle in Poland. Upon arrival, they pursued brilliant careers in various areas of life. Over time, they became Polonized. This was also the case for Giovanni Battista Trevano, who was active in Krakow in the first half of the 17th century and whose lifetime achievement was to become the royal architect of the Vasa kings. This article presents Trevano’s artistic oeuvre and provides insight into his social, economic, and intellectual status in the new community, including the architect’s offspring, who pursued successful careers in army, church, and state offices throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. These new findings are based on manuscripts that have recently been discovered by the author of the article in both Polish and Swiss archives. They allow for expanding the knowledge of the Trevano family’s genealogy and biography, and correcting some unjustified views in the discourse. On the basis of research on new archival sources, one can conclude that Giovanni Battista Trevano was a prominent architect, who is credited with introducing in Poland the early Baroque style, which soon became dominant in northern European art.

Becoming top global chef: what does it take to become a highly successful entrepreneurial careerist?

PurposeThis study aims to understand the career path to the pinnacle of professional life. What does it take for an entrepreneur to become a global celebrity in one’s profession? The authors explore the career motivation, trajectory and outcomes of a niche population who made it to the top of their careers.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative method was applied, using publicly available, prerecorded interviews of a documentary series on a unique sample of 30 top global chefs who gain Michelin-stars or equivalent. The authors used a qualitative approach to analyze the data alternating data and theory.FindingsThe authors identify a unique pattern, which the authors label as the “two-steps” trajectory, where these successful chefs went through a dual-hurdle process: first, delving into formal training and establishing themselves; then moving to a top chef status through innovation inspired by their history, chance events and treating their work as an artistic oeuvre and an experience.Practical implicationsThe authors provide an observed pattern for what is required to be a top global chef.Originality/valueThis study advances career theory and entrepreneurship studies via integrating the two perspectives. The authors offer a theoretical contribution by identifying the relevance and importance of “new careers” for entrepreneurs, recognizing critical success factors and reinstating the balance between the agency of the entrepreneur and their context.

Japanese Inspiration in the Art of Nandalal Bose

This article explores the impact of Japanese art and its techniques on the work of Nandalal Bose (1882–1966), one of India’s pre-eminent artists, by locating specific influences from leading Japanese artists of his era, with whom he had close associations during his lifetime. It builds a case for the argument that despite being a staunch advocate for indigenous aesthetics, the depth and versatility of Nandalal’s artistic oeuvre was rooted in his ability to absorb select practices from other artistic cultures, specifically the Japanese, enabling us to connect the origins of India’s modernistic art practices principally to him. The article draws attention to the stylistic and ideological learning that he acquired during interactions with master artists from Japan, including Yokoyama Taikan, Hishida Shunsō and Arai Kanpō and demonstrates the significance of these Japanese influences to both Nandalal’s artistic life and, as a direct result, to the stylistic direction taken by Indian art in the mid-twentieth century.

Ryszard Ryba (1935–2022) – wspomnienie

Ryszard Ryba is a Polish sculptor active in the second half of the 20 th century. He was primarily a creator of sacred art, and his works can be found in the churches of the Podkarpacie and Lesser Poland regions (the present dioceses of Przemyśl, Rzeszów, Tarnów and Sandomierz). In addition to sculpting, he was involved in designing sacred interiors and elements of their decor (tabernacles, sedilia, pews, confessionals, etc.), participating in the development of principles for adapting church interiors to the conditions of the reformed liturgy after the Second Vatican Council. He is also the author of graphic and drawing series, which he created especially in the first twenty years of the 21 st century. His sculptures, especially those from the beginning of his creative path, are characterised by great simplicity. Their impact is due to their powerful, synthetic form, acting as an expressive sign. With time, his great narrative talent became revealed more and more clearly, and the qualities that built the mood of unique softness and tenderness came to the fore. He was also increasingly willing to reach for topics related to family and everyday life. His artistic oeuvre, however, constitutes a coherent whole which is still intensely impressive.

Vladimir Pavlovich Zagorodnjuk and Applied Arts in Belgrade between the Two World Wars

Vladimir Pavlovich Zagorodnjuk (Odessa, 1889 — Sydney, 1976) is one of many Russian artists who arrived in Yugoslavia in the early 1920s, in the first wave of emigration, and contributed to the visual culture of Belgrade in the period between the two world wars. This period is marked by the development in all areas of art and was so fruitful that even today, a century later, it has still not been fully researched and presented, demanding a deeper introspection of authorial contributions and stylistic trends, especially in the field of applied art. With the experience he gained while studying at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris, he began his work in Belgrade in 1921 as a painter-scenographer of the National Theater. In the period 1923–1940, as an independent set designer for the National Theater, he staged 19 plays and 12 operas and about 20 plays in the period 1945–1950. Along with his scenographic work, in the period 1927–1939, he was noticed as a prolific sculptor, and created reliefs and facade sculptures of numerous public and private buildings in the capital and in other large centers of the kingdom. He cooperated with eminent architects of the period, often in favor of the Art Deco style, and contributed to its reception in Yugoslavia. He exhibited with the Society of Russian Artists (1928), with the group Krug (1929, 1930), at the Salon of Architecture (1931), at The first exhibition of theatrical painting (1938), as well as at the Salon of Russian Artists (1942 and 1943). He was awarded with Diploma de Medaille d’Or at The Exhibition of Industrial Decorative Modern Art 1925 in Paris, high State Decoration of Saint Sava in 1926 and The Medal for Labor Merits of III in 1949. In 1950, he immigrated to Australia, where he continued his artistic work to a lesser extent until his death in 1976 in Sydney. His three prolific decades of work in Belgrade left a considerable contribution, highly praised by contemporaries, but not entirely researched and evaluated by present historiography. Regarding previous researches, preserved edifices and documentation of the artist’s private legacy preserved in his family, as well as parts of his legacy donated to the Theater Museum of Serbia, this article tends to present the artistic oeuvre of V. P. Zagorodnjuk and to initiate its further consideration.

Still Life of Fabrics: Silence, Memory, and Materiality in Iwona Chmielewska’s Picturebooks

Still Life of Fabrics: Silence, Memory, and Materiality in Iwona Chmielewska’s Picturebooks Anita Wincencjusz-Patyna (bio) Iwona Chmielewska, born in 1960 in Poland, graduated in 1984 from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, where she has lived and worked until now. She is one of the best and internationally recognized Polish picturebook artists. Her achievements have been recognized by nominations for the Hans Christian Andersen Award since 2018. In 2022, she was an HCA finalist. Chmielewska has been widely acclaimed in South Korea, ever since her first appearance in the publishing market in 2004, and in Germany, especially after having been nominated for the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 2012 for the first time for Blum-ka’s Diary (2011), a book that won Polish IBBY’s Book of the Year Contest. Her picturebooks are also well-known in China, Japan, Spain, and France. Click for larger view View full resolution Chmielewska started her professional career at the turn of the 1980s by illustrating classic works by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and others, as well as lyrical collections by famous Polish poets. However, she developed her individual craft in the twenty-first century by creating her own books, based on logovisual structures that allow the artist to tell more through images rather than through words. As of now, her artistic oeuvre comprises over forty books, some of them published only in Korean. Chmielewska’s picturebooks are poetical and symbolical marriages of image and word, an invitation for readers to develop their imagination, and a tender welcome to enter invented worlds that feel familiar and mysterious at the same time. Both her original concepts and books created with other authors often focus on objects and their obvious and hidden meanings. Her artistic practice goes hand in hand with the theory introduced by Bjørnar Olsen, a Norwegian archaeologist, in his groundbreaking book In Defense of Things: Archaeology and Ontology of Objects (2010). In Olsen’s work, Chmielewska’s intuition has received a theoretical framework, which proves strong relations between people and things. This inseparable interweaving shapes human history. According to Olsen—and undoubtedly in Chmielewska’s art as well—things live on with us, they influence our existence, they are responsible for our memory of the past. In Chmielewska’s work, objects are characterized by unique qualities and are marked by their dynamic presence. Chmielewska often introduces empty spaces in her picturebooks. Following the concept of amor vacui, so widely present in old Chinese [End Page 76] art, she benefits from the contrastive effect so that the observer instantly focuses on any figure or single item depicted in her illustrations; nothing else, or not many other details, interfere in the audience’s perception. Just like in Dutch and Spanish still lifes, the objects are surrounded by neutral and empty background, which focuses our complete attention on them, and frames them in an eternal moment—silent heroes of dailiness. Emptiness evokes silence, favors concentration or even meditation, and creates occasions for readers’ reflections, memories, and experiences. Empty spaces work as pauses in both visual and textual narration. This silent emptiness metaphorically leaves space to be entered by a careful reader. In this manner, readers are enabled to feel safe and comfortable in the universe of Chmielewska’s picturebooks. In an interview, the artist explained: “I construct interiors for the book inhabitants and the readers to let them live inside and feel as hosts of the place” (Napiórska 241). The double-spreads in Chmielewska’s iconotexts are elaborately and finely designed. In each picturebook, and on all facing pages, the following issues are taken into the artist’s deliberate consideration: an overall design of the entire picturebook, a two-page spread arrangement, a fine outline of characters and objects, color disposition, and every tiny detail as well as the illustration background and its “texture.” Describing the visual features of picturebooks, Perry Nodelman remarked, “More roughly textured paper seems to invite our touch and in that way supports an atmosphere of involvement and intimacy” (48). This is undoubtedly true about Chmielewska’s picturebooks. Although all of them are printed on paper, an even stronger effect...

‘All the Pretty Horses’: Sports and Leisure in Polish Equine Painting – The Artistic and Literary Legacy of Wojciech Kossak (Artworks, Memoirs, Letters)

The human–horse relationship dates back centuries. In contemporary times, many people still value horses as their companions. These animals have had a very positive (even romantic) image in the eyes of many Poles because of historical reasons – by means of great victories, the role of husaria (cavalry), and Polish gentry fascinated with horses, which is present in a great number of works of literature. Over the centuries, horses constituted a source of inspiration for numerous artists and appeared in their works of art. Polish historical painting depicted numerous sporting activities, also the ones practised with the use of horses, such as huntings or races. This also concerns sports and leisure art of the turn of the twentieth century, especially the artistic oeuvre of Wojciech Kossak (1856–1942), an ardent lover of horses. Wider consideration of artistic representations of leisure can enhance sport studies as a field, offering fresh insight into how particular sports developed. The research has largely been based on historical sources.

Aristotle's dream: Evolutionary and neural aspects of aesthetic communication in the arts.

Art in general perception is something that transcends our notion of reality. In view of the earliest findings in Paleolithic sites, their abstract appearance and sometimes ceremonial context increased their status of a secret language. Even the first figurative cave paintings remained in a context of an encoded semantic whole. The highly symbolic value of art seemed invulnerable. It was just the claim for "mimesis" in Greek antiquity (Plato) that urged artists to "realistically" depict what can be seen-as to stay in track of eternal messages behind. This devaluated the artistic oeuvre to a purely imitating craft and had to overcome at once several inherent obstacles. First, that reality (the phenomenal world) is in general only a pale reflection of what lays behind (Platonic ideas) and second, that the human eye, unlike the human mind, cannot penetrate to more than ephemeral impressions. Moreover, it mixed up reality with what we are able to see (i.e. visual perception), thus supposing a pinpoint representation of the world by our senses. Aristotle was the first to qualify art as picturing more than we usually are meant to see, filling the gap between the sensual and the spiritual world. Aristotelian aesthetics includes concepts of reduction and selection of composition and emotion, thus a summarized view within any performance of poetics or painting. And it took centuries to close the gap between natural and aesthetic perception or art. Life sciences in the 20th century discovered the evolutionary basis of sensory perception as being highly biased and organized, concept as emotion-driven and thus, mentally equipped as well. This sets a new approach in our understanding of perception, art, and aesthetics as an ongoing communication in process on common bases. Art may cooperate or disagree, but never can cut the nexus with its perceptual prejudices and substrate.

Povezanost programskog sadržaja sa kompoziciono-tehničkim rešenjima u klavirskim komadima Modesta Musorgskog

Povezanost programskog sadržaja sa kompoziciono-tehničkim rešenjima u klavirskim komadima Modesta Musorgskog

Sugimoto’s Middle Brow and the Collective Horizon

Is art for everyone? Although attendance at art galleries has risen rapidly at the start of the 21st century, so too has the price of art, and the perception that art is an object of conspicuous consumption. The current paper presents a discussion of the possibilities that the photography of Hiroshi Sugimoto offers an artistic oeuvre that countenances the current state of the art market and is open to the aesthetic appreciation of a broader audience. As middlebrow mode of cultural production (Bourdieu 1996), photography is an artistic form that most people are familiar with, rendering it a medium that is broadly appreciable as a form of representation of common and cross-cultural experience. At the same time, photography can also satisfy the demands of highbrow cultural interpretation, meaning that it can act as a locus of community that provides access for a range of people to other forms of artistic culture. In particular, it is argued that Sugimoto’s Seascapes present a particular body of work of a subject matter and style that can be appreciated by people of any sociocultural background. Further, the often-made comparisons between these images and Mark Rothko’s multiform, colour-field paintings may offer viewers a bridge between middlebrow and highbrow culture, which has become, since Rothko’s death, more conceptually and economically challenging for audiences to engage with and understand.

Archive as Monument

The transitory quality of archival matter—its inevitable deterioration slowed but also highlighted by acid-free folders, gloved handling, and climate control—in part explains why it does not typically occupy the focus of art-historical investigation. Archival matter is, one might say, para-artistic. It contextualizes an artistic oeuvre, fleshes out an artistic biography. The hierarchy is clearly established: archival artifacts are statutorily subordinate to artworks. This essay asks, What happens if we reverse this order, and privilege documents over the artworks or monuments to which they relate? Or, more precisely, what happens when we view documents as monuments? What if we consider the meta-artistic, in addition to para-artistic, meanings of archives? I argue that recentering scholarly investigations around archival materials has profound ideological implications, while raising important questions about the stakes and limits of artistic practice.

Bronka Michałowska: A Life in Art

Abstract The article is an introduction to an in-depth critical analysis of the artistic oeuvre of Bronka Michałowska—a Polish painter and author of a substantial collection of ceramic works. Michałowska’s artistic activity has been presented in the manuscript in the context of her immigrant experience which includes the artist’s short stay in London, and later in Canada (Toronto) where she lived for sixty years and where she died in the year 2015. The article examines several main stages in the whole collection of Michałowska’s ceramic works which include the creation of: ceramic paintings with figural and floral representations, symbolic and allegorical works, and ceramic murals that resemble stained glass-work. A separate study has been dedicated to Michałowska’s household ceramic objects such as multipiece fiance sets, vases, bowls, teacups, and mugs, as well as to the possible sources of her artistic (painterly) inspirations; for example, the work of such artists as Henri Matisse, Tom Thomson, and Arthur Lismer.